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Shadow's Title: "10,000 Buckets of Blood"

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The Year: 1957. The Place: Skull Island.

Think of Skull Island and you think of King Kong, right? Well, despite the film opening at this secluded isle, the big hairy one is nowhere to be seen…and I’m not referring to Ron Jeremy. However, there are other critters to be worried about, like Simian Raticus – the infamous Rat Monkey of Sumatra. A New Zealand Zoo Official has hired some guides to help him find one…and found one he has, much to the consternation of the natives that are in hot pursuit. Apparently, in addition to a predilection for sacrificing women to an oversized ape, they are quite protective of the smaller primate species that call the island home. I wonder if Gary Coleman knows that? Anyway, the Zoo Guy manages to escape the natives, but not the lethal touch of the Rat Monkey. When his guides discover that he has been scratched and bitten, they disarm him…literally, before smashing his skull in. Maybe they should change the name of the place to SMASHED Skull Island. Greed still wins over and the guides sell the Rat Monkey, which eventually finds its way to the Wellington zoo.

Paquita Sanchez is a young girl who works at her family’s grocery store in Wellington while being hopelessly devoted to annoying cheerfulness as well as to finding her one true love – no matter who it may be. Seriously, this girl needs some lovin’…and quick! As luck would have it, her gnarly old grandmother (is there any other type of grandma?) loves to play with Tarot cards, as opposed to going out and getting a job. After one reading, the Tarot cards point to Lionel Cosgrove as Paquita’s future love. Unfortunately, Lionel has the distinction of being the world’s biggest Mama’s Boy. Despite looking like he’s pushing 35, he still lives with his mother. He may also be something of a nerd, but since this is decades before such geeky conventions as Dungeons and Dragons, video games and life-size Star Trek phasers were invented, we can only speculate on the true level of his nerd/geek factor. Suffice it to say that the poor bastard lives in the iron grip of his mother Vera, who runs her son’s life to meet her own self-centered ends. Paquita pursues Lionel, and it is while they are on a date at the zoo that the Rat Monkey bites Lionel’s mother, who was secretly following the pair.

In true moron fashion, Lionel spurns Paquita in order to look after his mother, but circumstances soon spiral out of control. Don’t they always? Vera dies from the Rat Monkey bite (Yay!), but isn’t dead for longer than a minute or so before she is up and about once again as a zombie (Yikes!). A very hungry zombie at that (Double Yikes!). Her first victim is Nurse McTavish, who also returns as a zombie mere seconds after having her head – let’s call it ninety percent – ripped off. Just call her Nearly Headless Nurse McTavish. To prevent Vera from running amok, Lionel obtains some tranquilizer from a Nazi Vet and regularly injects her with it to keep her sedate. Lionel does his best to keep her contained, but despite his best efforts, she continues to get loose. Finally she is hit by a trolley and everyone thinks she is dead (Lionel having sedated her again before the body was collected). A service is held and the body buried. Alas, Lionel knows that she won’t stay dead for long.

That night Lionel returns to the cemetery to dig up Vera, presumably to make sure she’s disposed of properly. He runs into a group of leather-clad youths who are having a beerfest amongst the headstones. They hassle Lionel and begin to beat him, but all too soon Vera comes flying up through the dirt, grabbing one named Void by the balls (he was pissing on her grave). He is quickly, and of course quite messily, eviscerated before being thrown through the air to land on the others. The rest of the gang tries to flee but Vera catches another and takes a few bites out of him. Two manage to escape, and as they run screaming out of the cemetery, they alert Father McGruder that things are amiss.

Father McGruder runs to aid Lionel, who is now facing three zombies – the two gang members killed by Vera now having reanimated themselves. What follows next is a true classic moment in the annals of not only zombie films, but also horror films in general as Father McGruder proceeds to unleash his martial arts skills on the zombies, proudly yelling that he “kicks ass for the lord.” In a sequence reminiscent of the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, he reduces one zombie to nothing but a torso via a series of straight and roundhouse kicks. Fortunately, Lionel is able to sedate Vera while all this Zombie-Fu is occurring. Unfortunately, Father McGruder is killed by the Void Zombie – thrown through the air to become impaled on a large statue, but not before being bitten by a flying zombie head in the process. Lionel sedates Void and collapses amongst all the bodies.

So now Lionel has four zombies to look after – Vera, Nurse McTavish, Father McGruder and Void. He has all four confined in the kitchen where he feeds them bowls of something (looks like scrambled eggs…maybe its leftover custard) laced with more tranquilizers. What follows next is a dining room scene that puts all others to shame in the gross out department. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s snake surprise and chilled monkey brains? Tame. The Skeksis gorging themselves in The Dark Crystal? Positively refined. Hell, even Jabba the Hutt looks like a paragon of good table manners and etiquette compared to what transpires here. Suffice it to say that spoons don’t always go in mouths and McTavish’s lid-like head makes for easy placement of food. While this gastronomic nightmare is taking place, the zombies of Nurse McTavish and Father McGruder begin eyeing each other in that way. Soon enough, little Baby Selwyn is born and he is one fugly little bastard.

Lionel hides all the zombies in the basement while doing his best to appear normal to anyone who drops by. This includes his slimy uncle Les, who comes sniffing around when he learns that Lionel is Vera’s sole beneficiary and who sets new cinematic records for noisiest on-screen piss and most blows to the testicles by a single character in a zombie movie. Other records are about to be set as well, such as how many people can this movie gross out with its over the top gore?

Things eventually come to a head when Les discovers the corpses in the cellar, threatening to turn Lionel in to the cops if he doesn’t hand over the house and his inheritance. Lionel agrees to this and is told by Les to dispose of the bodies (Les is still unaware of their zombified nature). Paquita persuades Lionel that all the zombies must be destroyed for good, and helps him inject them one last time with poison before burying the lot in the dirt of the cellar. There is a supremely gross moment here when Lionel, while preparing to give his zombie mom the last injection, gives her putrid, rotting forehead a loving kiss. Les then locks Lionel in the cellar while he drags an unwilling Paquita off to party he is throwing in the house, a couple dozen of his friends showing up to enjoy the festivities.

In the basement, Lionel makes a startling and quite unwelcome discovery. It seems he neglected to closely examine the poison he used to dispatch the zombies. He finds the bottle and printed on the opposite side of the word “poison” are the words “animal stimulant.” Can we all say a collective “Uh oh!?” No sooner has this revelation been made clear than the ground begins to shake. The dirt floor erupts and disgorges McTavish, Void, McGruder and Selwyn – now all SUPER zombies thanks to the stimulant. Lionel runs like hell up the stairs and begins banging on the door. As luck would have it, a partygoer trying to find the crapper opens the door and lets him out. Lionel quickly shuts and bolts the door, but the SUPER zombies are just too strong and the door is knocked over – the guy trying to find the crapper quickly divested of his entire ribcage (intact, I might add) by Void.

What follows next is a bloodbath/gorefest of truly epic proportions. I doubt gladiator matches in ancient Rome saw this much blood. Hell, there have probably even been much more sanitary wars. From this point on, the blood and guts just do not stop coming, flying at the viewer fast and furious. One can barely digest a bloody and horrific (if not to say curiously and morbidly imaginative) demise before the next is presented. And then the next, and the next and so on. Suffice it to say that the SUPER zombies crash the party. Hey, that almost sounds like a weird movie title – Super Zombies Crash the Beer Party. Soon most of the guests are dead, but naturally, they don’t stay dead. Before you can say zombie-a-go-go, the house is overflowing with undead.

Note - It is at this point that the movie enters its final segment, so if any of you really feel the need to watch this film and not know the ending ahead of time, skip the rest of this section.

Lionel, Paquita and Les are attacked by all the zombies, the three of them becoming separated and running all over the house in their attempts to avoid the walking dead. While in the attic, Lionel finds evidence that points to the fact that his mother murdered his father (and his father’s lover). Repressed memories click into place and he recalls these events from when he was a boy.

Eventually, after many close encounters and enough blood and guts to fill a dozen slasher flicks, Lionel fires up his lawnmower and holding it up before him, wades into the zombie crowd. In another classic display of flying body parts and spraying blood, the horde of undead is quickly reduced to pieces. This scene just goes on and on and on, sure to make an untold amount of people quite queasy.

Things are still bad, since Les has run into Super Zombie Vera in the basement, getting himself killed in the process. Lionel now realizes that all the zombies have been accounted for with the exception of his mother. He tells Paquita to run, but before she can, Vera – now the mother of all zombies, comes crashing up through the floor. Standing about ten to twelve feet tall, she has the biggest and grossest sagging boobs you will ever see, in addition to the fattest butt cheeks in fifty states. She calls for Lionel to “come to mommy” but he and Paquita run away up the stairs. She pursues them and the lot eventually wind up on the roof, the house going up in flames around them. There Lionel confronts his mother for the first and last time. His memories, aided by the photos and skeleton he found in the attic have returned. It seems his father did not drown in an accident at the beach. Rather, Vera killed his father and the blonde woman he was having affair with by drowning them both in the bathtub…and did all this in front of a young Lionel.

When Vera tries to harm Paquita, Lionel warns Vera to not touch her. Now, what follows is one of the most disturbing images I have ever seen. The womb/stomach on the ten-foot Vera zombie opens up and swallows Lionel whole. Yes, you heard me. However, clutching a talisman given to him by Paquita’s grandmother, Lionel forces himself out in a veritable tidal wave of blood. Zombie Vera falls through the roof into the burning house below to be consumed by the flames along with baby Selwyn. Lionel and Paquita slide down a phone line to the ground below.

On the street, Lionel and Paquita embrace as the fire department arrives, finally free to be with each other.

The end.

Where does one start when reviewing this film? At first glance people will focus on the blood and guts on display here. And quite honestly, how can one not? This film has been described as the goriest film ever made, and in good old Shadow’s experience, that is quite true. Now, I won’t claim to have seen every gore-filled film in existence, and I will admit to there being quite a few I have not seen, but I have seen a good number and this film certainly tops anything in my experience. Now, gore has never bothered me. Never. I’ve always been the type that could watch an autopsy while eating dinner…and still want seconds. However, I know that there is a significant portion of people out there who can barely stand the sight of blood. If you fall into the latter category, suffice it to say, Dead-Alive is not for you. This film may even test the intestinal fortitude of those who easily digest more “mainstream” gore films – Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween type movies. The entire gore factor from one of those flicks barely registers as five minutes worth in Dead-Alive. I kid you not. So be warned: this film is extremely gory.

At heart this film is a coming of age story…with zombies and gore. While at first glance those two elements may seem like they should be diametrically opposed to one another, in the end product they wind up complimenting each other quite well. The true test of each of those aspects is to ask if the movie would work if it focused solely on one. To me the answer is yes. The movie definitely works as a gore film. Given a subtle makeover and it could easily be played for shock and horror. On the flip side, the story of Lionel coming into his own works just as well, too. Remove the zombies and gore, and what you have left is still a quirky drama with believable – if at times somewhat cartoonish– characters. It’s true that the gore overshadows the human component at times, but I for one do not think the blood and guts would be nearly as effective without that personal drama to back it up.

Despite the violence and ultra gore, the film is centered on some very real people. We all have known people who are like the ones in this movie to some degree or another, so when it comes to the characters, suspension of disbelief is easy and natural. Director Jackson makes sure that the totally unbelievable situations are grounded by some totally believable characters. Vera Cosgrove is the mother from hell. Domineering in the extreme, she will manipulate her son in any way to get what she wants. If that means browbeating him, turning on the guilt or just talking down to him in general, so be it. In truth, she does not love her son. She only loves herself, with her selfishness knowing no bounds. Her happiness at being elected to an important position within the WLWL seems more about how others will now view her rather than how any sense of personal accomplishment or satisfaction will be derived from the situation.

Lionel, at first glance may seem a candidate for the Norman Bates School of smothered sons. Both have to deal with an overbearing mother, and both make a habit of keeping the bodies of their deceased mothers around the house. But where Bates exercised his desire for independence by murdering his mother, Lionel hasn’t reached that point yet…and if his demeanor before things all go to hell is any indication, he may never have done so. While Norman found it difficult to live without his mother’s stabilizing presence and ends up keeping her around to talk to, ultimately taking on her persona to help cope with situations where he would have normally deferred to her judgment, Lionel seems unwilling to let Vera go simply because he loves her, and despite his subtle yearnings for freedom, he keeps her around out of a sense of responsibility. He still tests the waters of total freedom, even when Vera is a zombie locked up in the basement and this shows that despite the initial similarities with Norman Bates, Lionel is by far the more well adjusted of the two. He has just never had the chance to act normal, whereas Norman was never even taught what normal was. It isn’t until the end of the film, when Vera’s secrets come to life, that Lionel realizes just how he’s been lied to all of his life. It is at that point that he finally puts the specter of his mother behind him, and in a literal (and quite disgusting) rebirth, begins his life anew.

The only character that comes up a bit short is Paquita. She seems defined by her desire to find her “one true love”, and while she isn’t anywhere near as annoying or persistent in her inquiries as the Jenny Williams character in The Wolf Man, her ambition does make her a bit one dimensional. She does fare better than her Wolf Man predecessor, however. Williams got munched shortly after her Tarot reading with some gypsies, whereas Paquita receives her Tarot reading from her grandmother and was no worse off than before. Of course, Paquita’s reading had a much happier forecast. One bright spot about Paquita is her total dedication to Lionel. When he pushes her away, she is still there for him. Even when she learns what he has been hiding in the basement, she still sticks with him and fights tooth and nail to save her man from the zombies. What a gal!

Two words come to mind when contemplating the level of gore in this film: sensory overload. There is so much gore on display here, especially in the last half-hour of nearly nonstop carnage, that after a while the sheer magnitude will either cause you to flee in disgust or begin to lose its impact. Because of the tone of the film, most of the violence, despite being ultra graphic, is still very much comedic in nature. This means that we can be very forgiving at the gore FX. That is not to say that they are substandard, because they are not…particularly when it comes to the bloody entrails and innards of the human body that get thrown about. That happens to be done extremely well. It’s the zombie make-up and severed limbs that often look a little cheesy, but like I said, given the film’s tone, that can be overlooked in the spirit of things. Another outstanding element to the gore FX are the many inventive deaths we see…again, especially at the end of the film. They show both a creative flair for achieving them so well on small budget, as well as a dark and cruel imagination I have not seen since…well, since me.

Foregoing the blood and guts for a moment, and one will notice that this picture foregoes the typical dark horror approach usually seen in such efforts in favor of a much more manic, black comedic tone. Yes, people are being killed in the most gruesome ways imaginable, but dang it – there is just something inherently funny in the proceedings. If that itself isn’t a comment on western culture and civilization, then I don’t know what is. Popular opinion seems to pride itself on the basic goodness of mankind, and frowns when bad things happen in the world. Society tells us that we should not like it when others are brutally tortured or killed. Yet, a film such as Dead-Alive has us laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all. A mama’s boy keeps a bunch of stiffs in the basement? Sure, that idea is nothing new and in some ways is all too real when looking at some of today’s news headlines. However, when those same stiffs are constantly on the move, managing to escape and thus requiring our mama’s boy to take great pains to keep them in line, we can’t help but chuckle at the inanity of what we’re witnessing. Call it an instinctive defense mechanism in all of us that enables us to cope with what we recognize as something bad. Dead-Alive excels at pushing this particular button.

In the end, Dead-Alive is a film that B Movie aficionados as well as devoted horror fans will embrace to varying degrees, depending on personal tastes. The average movie goer will most likely be appalled at the gore and find little to redeem the film.

Times Vera guilts Lionel into submission: 3
Deaths: 40 (estimated)
Animal Deaths: 3
Kung-Fu fighting Priests: 1
Times Les is hit in balls: 3
Gallons of blood: Thousands
Zombie sex: 1
100DD Boobs: 2
Severed limbs: dozens
Ambulatory piles of guts: 1

Shadow's Drinking Game: Uh...there is no drinking game. This time it's called the vomiting game, where you puke at the sight of all that gore. For those of you who have a cast iron stomach like me, then I offer these rules for a drinking game: every time someone says Lionel's name, take a sip.

The zoo keeper explaining the origins of the Rat Monkey.

Zoo Keeper: "Reckon they’re only found on one island, you know. Story goes, these great big rats come scuttling off the slave ships, and raped all the little tree monkeys."

Shadow’s comment: Typical sailors in port…looking for some tail.

Father McGruder taking on the zombies.

Father McGruder: "I kick ass for the lord!!"

Shadow’s comment: Just don’t say no when the collection plate is passed.

• When legal documents fail to sway people, the use of firearms makes for a good backup plan.
• No matter what country you’re in, Latin women are hot and aggressive.
• Tarot cards work damn fast.
• Zombies have superhero level strength.
• All former Nazis continue to wear their uniforms under their everyday clothes.
• Seminary schools have added martial arts training to the curriculum.
• Punching and kicking someone with enough force will easily remove their appendages.
• Being dead doesn’t bring an end to primal urges like eating and mating. However, your voice will drop several octaves.
• Not only can zombies get pregnant, the gestation period is just a few hours.
• Local drunks cheer on child beaters.

I had never even heard of this film until just three or four years ago. Then I started seeing it on the shelves when out hunting for DVDs. I didn’t give it much more than a cursory glance, given the fact that it was a film I knew nothing about. Money was another factor in those days, as I was bouncing between unemployment and one crappy job after another for the better part of two years. I just didn’t have the funds to gamble on an unheard of film. Fast forward to early 2004. At this point I’d been in my current (and good) job for over a year and a half, money was no longer quite the same concern and I had more disposable income to throw away on things such as DVD's. Also, in the interim, I had come to learn that Peter Jackson was the one responsible for this film. Having loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and learning that he had also helmed the enjoyable The Frightners, I was compelled to buy this film at long last. The claim on the DVD cover that it was the goriest film ever made didn’t hurt either. I was intrigued. Although I must admit to being dubious. I really doubted that it would be the goriest flick ever. So, I brought it home and sat down to watch it with The Other Half. Needless to say, I was quite surprised. It was indeed the goriest film I had ever seen. The Other Half agreed, although her take on the film was much different than mine. Suffice it to say that she loathed it and found it stupid beyond belief. When preparing films to review for this site, she will usually watch them with me, even if she has seen them before, to help point out things either of us may have missed the previous time. However, she absolutely refused to watch this one again. I think that says plenty right there. While not embracing the film like I have others, repeated viewings have endeared the film to me.

Shadow's rating: Seven Tombstones

The Good

• May be goriest film ever
• Father McGruder's kung-fu zombie ass kicking
• Sense of dark humor
  

The Bad

• Lionel looks too old for Paquita
• Zombie sex may scar you for life
• Super zombie Vera's giant sagging boobs and butt cheeks may scar you even worse
  

The Ugly

• No naked hot chicks
• Naked super zombie
• Do not eat while viewing
  

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